I had given Dix up for lost and was in a very low state of mind, in which Jeams sympathized with me deeply, though possibly for a different reason. He declared that we had "lost a dog as could win a ten-dollar bill any day he could get a man to put it up." "Cap'n, you jes' ought to 'a' seen the way he chawed up that bar-keep Gallagin's dog! I was jes' gittin' ready to rake in de pile when dem perlice jumped in an' hammered me. We done los' dat dog, Cap'n--you an' I got to go to work," he added with a rueful look. It did look so, indeed. A few days later, a letter from him announced that he had gotten a place and would call on me "before long." As he gave no address, I assumed that his "place" was in some bar-room, and I was much disturbed about him. One day, not long after, Dix dashed into my office and nearly ate me up in his joy. I really did not know until he came back how dear he was to me. It was as if he had risen from the dead. I took him up in my arms and hugged him as if I had been a boy. He wore a fine new collar with a monogram on it which I could not decipher. Next day, as I turned into the alley at the back of the building on which opened Mick Raffity's saloon, with a view to running up to my office by the back way, I found Dix in the clutches of a man who was holding on to him, notwithstanding his effort to escape. He was a short, stout fellow with a surly face. At my appearance Dix repeated the man[oe]uvres by which he had escaped from Jeams the day I left him behind me back East, and was soon at my side. I strode up to the man. "What are you doing with my dog?" I demanded angrily. "He's Mr. McSheen's dog." "He's nothing of the kind. He's my dog and I brought him here with me." "I guess I know whose dog he is," he said, insolently. "He got him from Dick Gallagin." Gallagin! That was the name of the man who had put up a dog to fight Dix. A light began to break on me. "I guess you don't know anything of the kind, unless you know he's mine. He never heard of Gallagin. I brought him here when I came and he was stolen from me not long ago and I've just got him back. Shut up, Dix!" for Dix was beginning to growl and was ready for war. The fellow mumbled something and satisfied me that he was laboring under a misapprehension, so I explained a little further, and he turned and went into Raffity's saloon. Next day, however, there was a knock at my door, and before I could call to the person to come in, McSheen himself stood in the door. The knock itself was loud and insolent, and McSheen was glowering and manifestly ready for trouble. "I hear you have a dog here that belongs to me," he began. "Well, you have heard wrong--I have not." "Well--to my daughter. It is the same thing." "No, I haven't--a dog that belongs to your daughter?" "Yes, a dog that belongs to my daughter. Where is he?" "I'm sure I don't know. I wasn't aware that you had a daughter, and I have no dog of hers or any one else--except my own."